As a kid did you ever try to paint by the numbers? The kit promised that ANYONE could be an artist. Inside the box with the beautiful painting on the cover there was a picture mapped out with little outline areas and numbers in them that corresponded to pots of paint.

You followed the instructions, filled in each area with your brush and paint, and “presto!” you had a finished painting (which looked like it was drawn by an artist and painted by an amateur).

Creative web page design by the numbers is nothing like paint by the numbers because you are the expert artist: designing, learning and improving — constantly!

What do I mean by the phrase “Design By the Numbers”? It means tracking web analytics data to determine which of your page designs are the most effective, not just creating based upon personal preference or gut intuition.

The Economist devoted an entire issue to reporting on the value of data:

Across the internet economy, companies are compiling masses of data on people, their activities, their likes and dislikes, their relationships with others and even where they are at any particular moment…

Where traditional businesses generally collect information about customers from their purchases or from surveys, internet companies have the luxury of being able to gather data from everything that happens on their sites. The biggest websites have long recognised that information itself is their biggest treasure. And it can immediately be put to use in a way that traditional firms cannot match.

…Before deploying a new feature, big sites run controlled experiments to see what works best.

Running ”experiments” is like designing by the numbers.

Detailed web analytics reports that come from applications like Google Analytics tell you everything you need to know, including how visitors find your site, which search engines they used, where they go once on your site, and from which pages each visitor exits your site. This website traffic data provides valuable clues as to your visitors’ needs and wants.

Using Google Analytics, you can design web pages, add their standard tracking code, post them and immediately start tracking activity on each page.

“The tracking code works by the inclusion of a block of JavaScript code on your website pages. When visitors to your website view a page, this JavaScript code executes the tracking operation for Analytics. Data about the page visit is collected and sent to the Analytics server…”

Now you can let your creative side take over. Design 2 or 3 different layouts of the same page. These are commonly referred to as A/B tests.These are usually performed to determine the better of two content variations. This is also referred to as multivariate testing.

3. Make sure any images are appropriate and help to sell or better illustrate the big idea.

4. Keep the most important information visible in the FIRST screen display. Your main offer and your call to action should all be visible on-screen as you first land on the page, without having to scroll down.

5. Point links inward. Let seekers find more depth as they drill deeper.

Do More With Your Data.

SIGMA Marketing Insights is a boutique marketing services firm obsessed with the customer experience, and driven to turn data into a powerful tool that will deliver more relevant, personalized interaction and engagement across all channels.